Food Roundup (Week 3)

(Click for larger pic!)

This week's notables:

1.  Tofu Ice Cream on Red Bean Ice @ Tsui Wah (翠華餐廳)

I went to this restaurant on Saturday night and someone wanted to order the tofu ice cream on red bean ice but it was sold out and I really wanted to try it, since it was tofu ice cream after all. Funny enough, me and my roommate were trying to find a restaurant in central and we ended up at another branch of this restaurant! I'm a pretty huge fan of red bean ice (a cold drink with red bean, sugary syrup and milk) so definitely had to try this one.  The tofu ice cream tasted like tofu, what can I say... and the tofu ice cream didn't make that much of a difference in the drink anyway, but it was cool to try something new =)

2.  Passionfruit shaved ice @ Modern Toilet Restaurant (Mong Kok or Causeway Bay)

Yes there is a toilet restaurant in Hong Kong!  All the food is served in mini toilets or other washroom related items, and some of the drinks are served in mini urinals.  A bunch of us decided to only get dessert because we wanted to check out the all you can eat KBBQ downstairs (which included all you can eat salmon sashimi, AHHH!).  We definitely didn't expect this to be SO huge!  The shaved ice was topped with various toppings like jelly, little cookies, raisins and fruit and chocolate ice cream shaped like poop :P  Pretty delicious, and flavourful all the way through unlike in Canada where half of it is just ice and no flavour!

Some other photos @ Modern Toilet:

My food is getting less and less interesting because I eat at the canteen (cafeteria) most of the time :P

HKU Campus

The HKU campus is awesome!  I guess I have low standards because of Waterloo, but I love HKU because of the interesting looking buildings and how all the buildings are on different levels.  Since the school is on a mountain, sometimes you'd have to take lots of stairs, escalators or elevators just to get to the other side of the campus.  Quite confusing at first but you learn the shortcuts and paths you're supposed to take it's actually quite nice =)

Here are some pics! (slideshow style, click for larger pics)

Course Enrolment, Timetables, and Other Adventures

I basically spent the last 2 days figuring out what courses to take and figuring out when and where these are.  There's alot of little rules like you have to take at least half your credits from your faculty (ie. Engineering) but in general it wasn't too bad. All the timetables for the courses are available for you, it's your job to make sure they don't clash.

HKU sets an add/drop period during the first 2 weeks of school, where you can choose your courses and try them out before finalizing them.  During these 2 weeks after you add your courses, the faculties and departments at HKU will screen the students and determine whether they will approve your courses or not.   Of course there's a risk of the courses not getting approved until the end of the 2 weeks.  Today's only the first day, so we'll see what happens... hopefully I get everything I wanted to take!

I also went on an adventure today!  After getting my student Octopus card (half price on the MTR/subway!) from far far away (I took 4 subway transfers, GG), I got off at Central station and decided to walk west towards school.  I had a list of things to buy and I was hoping to hop on a bus along the way back to school when I was done.  That plan didn't turn out so well because #1 I ran out of cash and #2 I walked all the way back to school.  It wasn't even a very efficient path, I made a huge loop to get back to school because I was trying to walk on a main road :P  This is the route I took...


View Larger Map

It was pretty fail, but I got what I needed.  I was so surprised at the selection at some Chinese(?) bakeries. Everything looked SOOO yummy! Some pics of what I bought:

I forget how fast you spend money in HK, carrying $300 with you is actually not very much.  Luckily I had lots of money on my Octopus card so I just found stores that took Octopus... which wasn't very hard.  Octopus card by the way is a rechargeable smart card that you can use on almost every transportation method and lots of chain restaurants and stores.  All you have to do is put the card near the sensor (or even your bag on the sensor) and it'll "doot", signifying that the transaction went through.  So convenient!

Finally after walking back to campus I got on a bus which took me back to rez.  I really worked up a sweat because the campus is half way up a mountain... =_= ""  Great exercise I guess :P

Food Roundup (Week 2)

This week's notables:

1.  Rice Noodle Roll (Cheung Fun 腸粉)

This snack (pictured left) is cheap (around $10hkd a plate) and tastes sooo good!  It's basically a bunch of rice noodle rolls cut into bite sized pieces, served with peanut sauce, sweet sauce and hot sauce which you squirt on however you want.  I personally like covering the cheung fun with peanut sauce and then squirting some sweet sauce on the side. SO GOOD!

2.  Taiwanese Snowflake Ice @ 糖仁街 China Town Dessert (TST)

Rough translation of the Chinese name for this dessert - 雪花冰.  First time I've ever tried or SEEN this and my goodness, it was sooo good.  I should have taken a picture of the order form - you choose one flavour for the ice cream base (10+ options), then a sauce/topping, then two sides.   I can't remember exactly what we ordered but I think the first one was green tea ice cream with sesame with tapioca balls and exploding mango balls.  These are like jelly/tapioca with mango juice inside, so they explode in your mouth when you eat them (SO GOOD!!!) .  Second one was chocolate ice cream with cornflakes and exploding yogurt balls and glutinous rice balls (湯圓?).  Best. Dessert. Ever.

Notable mention:  Mcdonalds Sausage and Egg Mcmuffin (Combo #10)

This is available ALL DAY every day for $9HKD (roughly $1.25 CAD).  That is all.

HKU Orientation

Had orientation for all the exchange students yesterday (Friday).  There were about 300 of us packed in a small theatre where they had speakers and even a lion dance for us.  It also included the lion spitting out gold chocolate coins and the helpers passing out lai see (red pockets) and new years snacks as an intro to the Chinese culture.  Unfortunately nothing too new for me but I think others enjoyed it.  We also had an icebreaker where we split off into different countries and filled up boards with stuff about our country/continent.  On the Americas board people had "fat", "debt" and "loud" (US) lol.

Met a couple of people yesterday too, even a girl from my program but one year younger... haha!  And I'm sooo glad that my roomate is in the same (HKU) program as me so we got to settle our courses together and probably take a couple of courses together too! Yay :)  Looking forward to school starting on Monday.  I don't think my courses are too difficult this term, and It's only pass/fail after all.  The only annoying thing is that they have an add/drop period for courses during the first 2 weeks of school, so your schedule isn't really finalized until the end of the 2 weeks.  Hopefully I can get all my courses within the first few days though.  We'll see how it goes!